hich friend?"

"Of course, to Mary of the Light."

"Oh, certainly!"

"In your best Spanish."

"Rest assured," said I, smiling at the earnestness of my friend.

I was about moving from the spot, when the thought occurred to me to
send the company to camp under command of Oakes, and take Clayley along
with me.

"Clayley, by the way," said I, calling the lieutenant back, "I don't see
why you may not carry your compliments in person. Oakes can take the
men back. I shall borrow half a dozen dragoons from Rawley."

"With all my heart!" replied Clayley.

"Come, then; get a horse, and let us be off."

Taking Lincoln and Raoul, with half a dozen of Rawley's dragoons, I bade
my friends good-night.

These started for camp by the road of Mata Cordera, while I with my
little party brushed for some distance round the border of the prairie,
and then climbed the hill, over which lay the path to the house of the
Spaniard.

As I reached the top of the ridge I turned to look upon the scene of our
late skirmish.

The cold, round moon, looking down upon the prairie of La Virgen, saw
none of the victims of the fight.

The guerilleros in their retreat had carried off their dead and wounded
comrades, and the Americans slept underground in the lone corral: but I
could not help fancying that gaunt wolves were skulking round the
inclosure, and that the claws of the coyote were already tearing up the
red earth that had been hurriedly heaped over their graves.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE COCUYO.

A night-ride through the golden tropical forest, when the moon is
bathing its broad and wax-like frondage--when the winds are hushed and
the long leaves hang drooping and silent--when the paths conduct through
dark aisles and arbours of green vine-leaves, and out again into bright
and flowery glades--is one of those luxuries that I wish we could obtain
without going beyond the limits of our own land.

But no. The romance of the American _northern_ forest--the romance that
lingers around the gnarled limbs of the oak, and the maple, and the
elm--that sighs with the wintry wind high up among the twigs of the
shining sycamore--that flits along the huge fallen trunks--that nestles
in the brown and rustling leaves--that hovers above the bold cliff and
sleeps upon the grey rock--that sparkles in the diamond stalactites of
the frost, or glides along the bosom of the cold black river--is a
feeling or a fancy of a far different characte